NEW ORLEANS --- Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.
In a yearlong review of levee work, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the site of another devastating flood.
Interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.
"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."
Geneva Stanford, a 76-year-old health care worker, is a believer. She lives in a trim and tidy prefabricated house in the Lower Ninth Ward, 200 feet from a rebuilt floodwall that Katrina broke.
"This wall here wasn't there when we had the flood," she said. "When I look at it now, I say maybe if we had had it up it there then, maybe we wouldn't have flooded." She's not alone. A recent University of New Orleans survey of residents found concern about levee safety was dropping off the list of top worries, replaced by crime, incompetent leadership and corruption.
This sense of security might be dangerously naive.
FOR THE FORESEEABLE future, New Orleans will be protected by levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina.
When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection -- what are defined as 100-year levees.
This does not mean they would stand up to storms for a century. Under the 100-year standard, in fact, experts say every house being rebuilt in New Orleans has a 26 percent chance of being flooded again over a 30-year mortgage, and every child born in New Orleans would have nearly a 60 percent chance of seeing a major flood in his or her life.
"It's not exactly great protection," said John Barry, the author of Rising Tide , a book New Orleans college students read to learn about the corps' efforts to tame the Mississippi.
THE CORPS SAYS its work is making the city safer, but there are serious doubts.
At every step in the scramble to correct the engineering breakdowns of Katrina, experts have questioned the ability of the corps to do the right job.
The agency has installed faulty drainage pumps, used outdated measurements, issued incorrect data, unearthed critical flaws, made conflicting statements about flood risk and flunked reviews by the National Research Council.
At the same time, the corps has run into funding problems, lawsuits, a tangle of local interests and engineering difficulties -- all of which has led to delays in getting the promised work done.
An initial September 2010 target to complete the $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work has slipped to mid-2011. Then last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work behind schedule because of engineering complexities, environmental provisos and real estate transactions. The report also said costs would likely soar.
A more recent analysis shows the start of 84 of 156 projects was delayed -- 15 of them by six months or more. An analysis of what it would take to build even stronger protection -- 500-year-type levees -- was supposed to be done in December but is still unfinished.
Also, the corps says it will need more than 100 million cubic yards of clay and dirt to build up levees -- enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome 20 times.
Publicly, the corps says the work is on budget and will be done by 2011.
THE TROUBLE stirs up bad memories of the four decades of excruciatingly slow levee building after Betsy.
Betsy was eerily similar to Katrina. The levees broke. Water reached rooftops and people clung to trees for survival. A flotilla of rescuers worked for days in lingering floodwaters.
In Betsy's aftermath, President Lyndon B. Johnson pledged to rebuild New Orleans and make it safe from hurricanes. Little more than a month after the storm, Congress gave the corps $85 million to build a Category 3 hurricane levee system.
By 1976, though, the Government Accountability Office found the completion date for the work had slipped 13 years, from 1978 to 1991. Costs had soared to $352 million. By 1982, the agency found that the project's cost had increased to $757 million and that work would not get done by 2008.
What happened? By 1968, a Congress worn down by the Vietnam war and economic turmoil began reining in spending; at the same time, the work met resistance from Louisiana politicians, communities, environmentalists and businesses fighting for individual interests.
Will this history repeat itself?
Said Tim Doody, the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, "What happened after Betsy? Katrina. And what's going to happen after Katrina? Pick a name and put it on it and it's going to happen again unless we pull together to make sure."
BETSY VS. KATRINA
Hurricane storm surge has flooded New Orleans twice in the past 45 years: on Sept. 9, 1965, during Hurricane Betsy and on Aug. 29, 2005, during Hurricane Katrina. After each disaster, the nation has rallied to help New Orleans recover and build a better levee system. But there are troubling signs that one disaster creates the next as inadequate levee building encourages dangerous development while policy decisions bog down efforts to make the city safe.
Here's a snapshot of then and now in New Orleans:
FUNDING TROUBLES
After Betsy: Congress authorized $85 million for levees in 1965. But costs soon soared: By 1976, the estimated cost had risen to $352 million and by 1982 to $757 million.
On the state and local level after Betsy, Louisiana officials balked at paying their share of the cost. Some blamed the federal government for the flood; others opposed spending money on a levee system they considered too short in length. Residents voted down tax increases for flood protection.
After Katrina: By mid-2008, Congress had authorized $14.8 billion. Publicly, the Army Corps of Engineers says it can get the job done with what it has by 2011. But a recent analysis for a nearby levee project saw the cost jump from $882 million in 2000 to more than $10 billion today.
Louisiana officials have sought to delay and lower state payments and have not considered raising taxes to expedite post-Katrina levee work. In July, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said: "I believe that this city and this region deserve 100 percent federal funding for this flood protection system."
QUESTIONABLE ENGINEERING
After Betsy: In the 1970s, the corps ignored updated research on hurricane severity from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Independent experts say this led the corps to underestimate risk.
After Katrina: The corps defined Katrina as a 1-in-396-year storm -- extremely rare. Numerous experts, some arguing Katrina is more likely a 1-in-32-year storm, say the corps is again underestimating risk.
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